Guillaume Du Fay

Opera Omnia 02/01

Vasilissa, ergo gaude

Edited by Alejandro Enrique Planchart

Marisol Press
Santa Barbara, 2011
 Guillaume Du Fay
Opera Omnia
Edited by Alejandro Enrique Planchart

01 Cantilena, Paraphrase, and New Style Motets

02 Isorhythmic and Mensuration Motets
03 Ordinary and Plenary Mass Cycles
04 Proper Mass Cycles
05 Ordinary of the Mass Movements
06 Proses
07 Hymns
08 Magnificats
09 Benedicamus domino
10 Songs
11 Plainsongs
12 Dubious Works and Works with Spurious Attributions

© Copyright 2011 by Alejandro Enrique Planchart, all rights reserved.

Guillaume Du Fay, Vasilissa, ergo gaude: 1

02/01 Vasilissa, ergo gaude - Concupivit rex

= Guillaume Du Fay
Cantus 1

Va si lis sa, er go gau de,

Resolutio

Va si lis sa,

Cantus 2

Contratenor
8

Tenor
8

Qui a es di gna om ni

er go gau de, Qui a es di

16

de,

gna om ni lau de,

D-OO
Guillaume Du Fay, Vasilissa, ergo gaude: 2

25

Cle o phe, cla ra ge stis A tu is de Ma la te stis,

Cle o phe, cla ra ge stis A tu is de Ma la te stis,

8
Concupivit rex decorem tuum
I --> Prima Talea
34

In I ta li a prin ci pi

In I ta li a prin ci pi bus Ma

40

bus Ma gnis et no bi li bus! Ex tu o vi vo cla ri

gnis et no bi li bus! Ex tu

46

or, Qui a cun ctis est no bi li or:

o vi vo cla ri or, Qui a cun ctis

D-OO
Guillaume Du Fay, Vasilissa, ergo gaude: 3

52

Ro mae o rum

est no bi li or: Ro mae o rum

58

est de spo tus, Quem co lit mun dus to tus;

est de spo tus, Quem co lit mun dus to tus;

___|

64

In por phy ro est ge ni tus, A de o mis sus cae li tus.

In por phy ro est ge ni tus, A de o mis sus cae li tus.

8
Quoniam ipse est dominus tuus
II
--> Seconda Talea
73

Iu ve ni li ae ta te Pol

Iu ve ni li ae ta te Pol les et

D-OO
Guillaume Du Fay, Vasilissa, ergo gaude: 4

79

les et for mo si ta te Mul tum in ge ni

for mo si ta te Mul tum

85

o fe cun da Et u tra que lin gua fa cun da

in ge ni o fe cun da Et u tra que

91

Ac cla ri or es

lin gua fa cun da Ac cla ri or

97

vir tu ti bus Prae a li is his om ni bus.

es vir tu ti bus Prae a li is his om ni bus.

___|
D-OO
Guillaume Du Fay, Vasilissa, ergo gaude: 5

02/01 Vasilissa, ergo gaude – Concupivit rex

Sources
Q15 (I), fols. A 276v-277r, R 247v-248r, M 273, “G. du fay.” Full black notation. Text in cantus 1 and 2, no text in
the contratenor, full text in the tenor but set down as incipits rather than underlaid.
Ox 213 (9), fols. 132v-133r, “Guillermus dufay composuit.” Text in cantus 1 and 2, incipit in the contratenor:
“Cleophe etc.,” Full text in the tenor but set down as incipits.
Tr 871, fols. 57v-58r, “dufay.” Text in cantus 1 and 2, no text in the contratenor, incipit in the tenor.
Clefs and Mensurations

1
Cantus 1 c2 -
Cantus 2 c2 -
Contratenor c4 -
Tenor c4 -
Text

Cantus 1 and 2
Vasilissa, ergo gaude, Empress, therefore rejoice,
Quia es digna omnis laude, For you are worthy of all praise,
Cleophe, clara gestis Cleofe, glorious from the deeds,
A tuis de Malatestis, Of your Malatesta kin,
In Italia principibus Leading men of Italy,
Magnis et nobilibus, Great and noble.

Ex tuo viro clarior, More glorious from your husband,

Quia cunctis est nobilior: For he is nobler than all;
Romaeorum est despotus, He is the despot of the Rhōmaioi,
Quem colit mundus totus; He whom the whole world reveres;
In porphyro est genitus, He was born in the purple,
A deo missus caelitus. Sent by God from heaven.

Iuvenili aetate In youthful bloom

Polles et formositate You abound and in beauty,
<Ingenio> multum fecunda Very fertile <in your wits>
Et utraque lingua facunda And eloquent in both tongues,
Ac carior es virtutibus And you are more glorious for your virtues
Prae aliis hominibus. Above all human beings.

Tenor
Concupivit rex decorem tuum The King has conceived desire for your beauty;
Quoniam ipse est dominus tuus. For he is your Lord.

The tenor is the entire respond of the gradual Concupivit rex (LU 1230, GT 408), used today in the
common of the BVM and before Vatican II in the common of virgins. It is a post Gregorian gradual, which
apparently originated in the seventh century for the feast of St. Sabina (29 August) as a loose contrafact of the
gradual Ecce quam bonum for Sts. John and Paul.1 In Cambrai and northern France it was used for the Assumption

1
René-Jean Hesbert, Antiphonale Missarum Sextuplex (Brussels: Vromant & Co., 1935. R: Rome: Herder, 1967),
civ-cv.
Guillaume Du Fay, Vasilissa, ergo gaude: 6

or the Nativity of the Virgin,2 but in Italy (where its use was not common) it was used for St. Sabina (29 August) or
sometimes St. Euphemia (6 September).3 The tenor is divided into two taleae, the isorhythmic section is preceded by
a canonic introit sung by a divided cantus 1 and followed by a cadence of two notes. After the introit all voices are
isorhythmic. Structure: I + c/2t + P.
The motet celebrates the upcoming marriage of Cleofe di Malatesta, daughter of Malatesta di Pandolfo,
lord of Pesaro (and sister of Archbishop Pandolfo di Malatesta, for whom Du Fay wrote Apostolo glorioso and O
sancte Sebastiane, as well as sister of Carlo di Malatesta, for whom Du Fay wrote Resvelliés vous) to Theodore II
Palaialógos, Despot of Morea and son of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaialógos. They had been betrothed
since 1419, but Cleofe, together with Sofia de Montefeltro, who was to marry the eldest son John, set sail from
Rimini for Constantinople on 30 August 1420. The actual details of the journey are not entirely clear, but on 16 July
1420 the Venetian senate authorized the Byzantine ambassador to accompany Cleofe in a Venetian galley from Fano
(about 12 Km south of Pesaro), to Chioggia (about 28 Km by sea from Venice), and on 30 August it gave Orsato
Giustiniano, commander of the galleys, the necessary instructions to start the journey to Byzantium, including
allowing two ladies on board, Cleofe and Sofia de Montefeltro. 4 If there were ceremonies in Pesaro or Fano before
Cleofe set sail for Chioggia they took place in July of 1420, and it is most likely that this was the occasion for
Hughes de Lantins, who was in the service of Cleofe’s father in Pesaro, to write the ballata Tra quante regïone.5
Rimini would have been the most logical scale for the galley between Fano and Chioggia, and surely Carlo di
Galeotto Malatesta, lord of Rimini received and feted his cousin, and it is for these perhaps for these festivities that
Du Fay most likely wrote Vasilissa.6 The text of Vasilissa, with its line implying that Cleofe was already fluent in
Greek and Latin,7 has given pause to some scholars as to the date of the work, 8 but the line may be mere poetic

2
Thus in Cambrai, Mediathèque Municipale, Missals, MSS 146, fol. 153r; 151, fol. 175r; 232, fol. 42v; and
Graduals, MSS 60, fol. 84r; 12, fol. 51r, and Missale parvum secundum usum venerabilis ecclesiae Cameracensis
(Paris: Simon Vostre, 1507), fol. 54v (all for the Nativity), in Arras it was used for Assumption, Cambrai,
Mediathèque Municipale, MS 75, fol. 111r, and in Lille for St. Cecilia, Cambrai, Mediathèque Municipale, MS 61,
fol. 123r.
3
Thus, for example, in Ivrea, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS 60 (91), fol. 112r; Modena, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS
O.I.7, fol. 171r; Padua, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS A 47, fol. 208v; Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, MS 123, fol. 135v;
Rome, Biblioteca Valliceliana, MS C 52, fol. 120r (all for St. Sabina), and Piacenza, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS 65,
fol. 220v (for St. Euphemia).
4
Zakythinos, Le Despotat, 188-89.
5
Ox 213, 36v, edited in Charles Van den Borren, Pièces polyphoniques profanes de provenance liègeoise (XVe
siècle) (Brussels: Éditions de la librairie enciclopédique, 1950), no. 32. Questions that have been raised about the
date of this poem are based, by and large, on a misunderstanding of the “Elena” mentioned in it. As Holford-
Strevens notes, she is neither Cleofe’s daughter nor her husband’s mother, but rather Helen of Troy, mentioned to
note that Cleofe was even more beautiful. See Leofranc Holford-Strevens, “Du Fay the Poet? Problems in the Texts
of his Motets.” Early Music History 16 (1997), 106, note 19.
6
This is no longer absolutely certain. The assumption of most historians had been that Du Fay was in the service of
Carlo di Galeotto, but the most recent evidence is that he was actually in the service of Cleofe’s brother, Pandolfo di
Malatesta, see Margaret Bent, “Petrarch, Padua, Malatesta, Du Fay, and Vergene bella,” Bon jour, bon mois, bon an
et bonne estraine, ed. Fabriche Fitch and Jacobijn Kiel (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011).
7
Et utraque lingua facunda [And eloquent in both tongues], a standard idiom for “Latin and Greek,” see Holford-
Strevens, “Du Fay the Poet?, 106.
8
The date of August 1420 for the work was established by Besseler in “Neue Dokumente zum Leben und Schaffen
Dufays,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 9 (1952), 161, with Fallows, Dufay, rev. ed. (London: Dent 1987), 21 in
agreement. Lütteken, Guillaume Dufay und die isorhythmische Motette Gattungstradition und Werkcharacter an der
Schwelle der Neuzeit, Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft aus Muenster 4 (Karl Dieter Wagner: Hamburg and
Eisenach, 1993), 270, agrees with the general date, and posits a proxy wedding at Pesaro as the occasion, which
could be possible but for which we have no secure documentation. Cleofe’s Italian years spent mostly in Rimini,
which is where she embarked for Constantinople. Nino Pirrotta, “On text Forms from Ciconia to Dufay,” Aspects of
Medieval and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. Jan La Rue (New York: Norton, 1966.
Reprinted New York: Pendragon, 1978), 677-78, suggests a later date.
Guillaume Du Fay, Vasilissa, ergo gaude: 7

exaggeration of Cleofe’s linguistic abilities. Cleofe probably began studying Greek from the time her marriage
contract was signed as Besseler suggests,9 and that alone would have sufficed to a court’s poetaster to pronounce her
eloquent; such hyperbole has always been a commonplace of certain kinds of court poetry.10 The wedding took
place, most likely in Constantinople, on 19 January 1421. 11
Du Fay was at Cambrai on Ash Wednesday12 and it is more than likely that he remained at Cambrai until
Easter, so that after he was contacted by Pandolfo di Malatesta who was to become his patron for the next four years
he probably reached Italy in late spring or summer of 1420. The opening of the cantus firmus provides proof that he
wrote the motet after arriving in Rimini. Concupivit rex opens with one of the most common intonations for chants
in mode 1:

This is the form the opening has in the modern chant books and medieval manuscripts copied west of the Rhine and
in Western Italy. But east of the Rhine and in sources east of Rome and from the Adriatic coast, the opening reads:

And that is the melodic pattern that Du Fay uses in his motet.
The piece, as Fallows notes, follows exactly in its isorhythmic section the plan of Ciconia’s Ut per te
omnes,13 but this is simply a factor of Du Fay setting the cantus firmus as a single color in two taleas, probably the
simplest and most straightforward construction for an isorhythmic tenor. The sound of the work, however,
particularly in terms of its rhythmic drive, invites comparison with another of Ciconia’s work, the motet O felix
templum iubila.14 If the surface of Vasilissa is inescapably Italian, however, its contrapuntal structure, particularly
with its firmly built four voice counterpoint, belongs firmly in a tradition rooted in the French motets of the late 14 th
and the early 15th century, a tradition that as Michael Allsen takes pains to point out, includes the large repertory of
motets from the Cyprus Codex,15 where the pervasive anonymity of all of the music in the manuscript hides in all
probability the work of two northern French musicians, Gillet Velut and Jehan Hanelle, whose early careers
intersected with that of Du Fay at the start of Du Fay’s musical life. 16 Allsen also makes a case for connections
between this motet and the much earlier Rex Karole of Royllart.17 The planning of the motet, as Margaret Vadrell
Sandresky shows, makes considerable use of Fibonacci numbers, the golden section (which for the entire motet falls
at the start of the second talea) and the number thirteen, which she argues, on the basis of a long Byzantine tradition,
is symbolic of the Byzantine emperor himself. 18 Jaap van Benthem, in his review of Fallows’s Dufay, notes that the
tenor of the motet adds to 100 notes, and the other three voices contain 700 notes. In certain medieval traditions the
number 100 was symbolic of charity, the number 700 (or 7) had also religious connotations, and the total number,

9
Besseler, “Neue Dokumente,” 161.
10
For an assessment of the poetic quality of Vasilissa see Holford-Strevens, “Du Fay the Poet?” 105-106.
11
Fallows, Dufay, 250.
12
Lille, Archives Départementales du Nord, 7G 2926, fol. 7r. Ash Wednesday fell on 29 February in 1420.
13
Fallows, Dufay, 21. Ciconia’s motet is edited in Margaret Bent and Anne Hallmark, The Works of Johannes
Ciconia, Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century 24 (Monaco: Éditions de L’Oiseau-Lyre, 1985), 103-107.
14
Bent and Hallmark, Johannes Ciconia, 68-72.
15
Turin, BN, MS J.II.9, see Michael Allsen, “Style and Intertextuality in the Isorhythmic Motet, 1400-1440,” Ph.D.
Dissertation (University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1992), 39-76, summary in 72-73.
16
Fallows, Dufay, 15, Alejandro Enrique Planchart, “The Early Career of Guillaume Du Fay,” Journal of the
American Musicological Society 46 (1993), 357.
17
Allsen, “Intertextuality,”116-23.
18
Margaret Vadrell Sandresky, “The Golden Section in Three Byzantine Motets of Dufay,” The Journal of Music
Theory 25 (1981), 291-306.
Guillaume Du Fay, Vasilissa, ergo gaude: 8

800, was symbolic of permanence and eternity. 19 All these numerological calculations and their number symbolism
probably feel much too contrived to modern readers, but we should remember that such a way of thinking was part
of the education of medieval and renaissance men and women from their earliest schooling on.
The text of the motet is a rather incompetent poem in three stanzas of six syllables (a structure ignored by
Du Fay, who was apparently more interested in setting his bipartite structure based both on the text structure of the
Gregorian respond and on number symbolism. It has missing words and corruptions, and the edition and translation
are those of Leofranc Holford-Strevens, who offers a perceptive critical study of the text and its modern editions. 20
The only changes I have made are the use of modern liturgical Latin spellings and modern English. Holford-
Strevens’s prose translation was so careful and cleverly done, that it needed only to be typeset as shown above to
make it correspond, line by line, with the Latin.
The motet is organized throughout in perfect modus, made explicit by the rests, and despite the
considerable use of minims (which are used in a ornamental Italianate manner) calls for a fast tempo throughout.
The mensura remains on the perfect breve, which should move at a minimum ca. MM 40, but can be taken as fast as
MM 48, a tempo that bring out the dance-like rhythms and the obvious virtuosity of the hocket passages. Nominally
the piece calls for five parts on account of the divided cantus 1 of the introit, but since cantus 1 and 2 share the same
range the resolutio was probably sung by the same singer who sang cantus 2.

19
Jaap van Benthem, “David Fallows, Dufay,” Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse
Muziekgeschiedenis 33 (1983), 111.
20
Holford-Strevens, “Du Fay the Poet? 102-6.